


Bitter Wind

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Drama, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 10:44:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/797692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new year is a time for new beginnings but it is also a time of endings. Fallout after TS by BS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Wind

## Bitter Wind

#### by Maigret

  
The majority of characters in this story are based on the television show The Sentinel created by Bilson and DeMeo and are owned by Pet Fly and countless lawyers. I don't own them and get no profit from playing with their creations.  
Written for two people in my life: Noon who steadfastly held my hand and answered my odd questions and K who allowed me entry into a superb group of friends.   
None  
This story is a sequel to: 

* * *

Bitter Wind 

New Year's Eve: Washington State, Cascade 

Jim 

It is cold. Even for Cascade it's very cold. But I'm comfortable with it. I stand on the loft balcony overlooking the bay gripping the iron railing tightly. 

Cold? I don't feel the cold outside; all my cold is on the inside. 

This has been a brutal year - for me - it's been bad, for Sandburg, it's been death - and I mean that literally. 

My heart races and I begin to do the breathing exercises Sandburg has drilled into me. In through my nose, hold for a slow count of three and out through my teeth very, very slowly. Yeah, so it's a variation of Lamaze breathing. So what? 

You would think the death thing would have been the capper. Yeah, Sandburg died a few months ago. Some fucked up guardian angel I am. All it took was for one female sentinel to blow into town and I forgot to listen to my big head and instead let the little head do all the thinking. 

And who do you think paid for that? Sandburg! With his life. 

Uh oh! My heart is racing again. More breathing and counting coming up. 

So you'd think I would've learned my lesson after that? Most normal people would have. But I'm not normal remember. I'm a "special" human - a fucked up Sentinel. Sometimes I think Blair miscounted one of my heightened senses. I'm a Sentinel with five heightened senses, but between me and the great outdoors, I think when he counted and only got five that's because my common sense went missing. 

You'd think that I would have learned after the whole Blair-dead-Blair-alive incident. No! Less than five months later, Blair's again paying the price...flushing his entire career because of me. He stood before his peers and lied. Mea culpa! He said. 

He changed his entire career and decided to become a cop. The one chuckle I got out of this whole deal was Naomi finally having to process that her baby had grown up to be a PIG. I'm telling you I know God's a woman. The irony she frequently displays is beyond a mere male. 

Anyway I should've seen the next move coming. As I've said before if it weren't for my heightened senses, I would be dead a thousand times over. I was a bit unprepared for the day Blair came home looking as if he had gone a couple rounds with several Mark Tyson's. 

He actually expected me to believe him when he said it was routine hazing. 

Routine hazing does not give not one, but two black eyes, bruised cheekbones, several fist-sized sore spots all over one's body. 

You would think that would wake me up, right? 

Nah, that didn't. I mean, of course I didn't believe what he'd said, but I did stay out of his way and let him handle it as he had requested. 

So, you want to know what has me out here with my nuts crawled up as high as they could go into my body? 

I came in last evening and as usual Sandburg's backpack was on the floor waiting to trip the unwary. Long used to it, I stepped over and in one motion picked it up and caught it on the heavy duty hook near the door while turning and snapping the dead bolt home with my other hand. 

Yesterday, though, I dislodged something. A thin white envelope fluttered to the ground. 

Normally I wouldn't have glanced at it and it would've been stuffed back into Sandburg's backpack, but my damnable eyesight, one of those aforementioned heightened senses saw the address. My brain deciphered it and the rest as they say was history. 

I still maintain that it was an automatic reaction that my fingers slipped under the flap of the envelope and brought the thin sheet of paper out. In fact I was half way through the letter when an inarticulate roar of rage alerted me. 

The letter was swiped from my hands so fast that I can still feel the paper burns. But that's me, a pretty sensitive guy all the time, except, when I am not. Along with the burns, were the scorch marks on the floor as Blair hightailed it out of the loft in a blur of speed. I didn't miss the discolorations though. He'd been beaten up. Again! 

It's nearly 11 PM on this the last day of the year - just over twenty four hours since Blair left but I know in my bones he will be back before midnight. See, he won't leave me in the lurch when the fireworks start at midnight to welcome the New Year. The loft has a prime view of the bay with all the barges lined up waiting to release their colorful cheer to the sky. 

You would think I wouldn't have had enough time to do what I did. The phone call was the easiest part. Building the symbolic offering was difficult. Blair had mentioned the Uriai tribe's custom during one of his riffs, and yes I let him think I don't listen to him, because if he ever knew I listened I might actually have to respond to his questions and then where would we be? Going to hell in a hand basket, if you ask me. 

No, the universe continues to spin because Blair lectures and I listen - without listening, that is. 

Sighing, I zoomed in on a lone figure five blocks away, crossing the intersection of Bryant and Prospect. 

Blair was coming home. 

Maybe now I could wipe away those words that were seared into my retina. 

"Dear Candidate: After having considered your application for the Masters' program in Forensic Anthropology, at this time we cannot offer you a place in the incoming class. Blah...Blah...Blah...." 

Would you believe the University of Washington, Cascade Extension, refused Blair Sandburg admission? UW at Cascade is probably one itty bitty step above a community college. 

And that's what woke me up! 

That a school that would have begged, yes begged, to have Blair Sandburg TA one of their classes, was now rejecting him. 

They say money talks, but that's only for those who have new money and not that much of it. My father has handled enormous sums of the stuff for so long and been buddies with others in that same position that he is intimately aware of how it whispers in all the powerful places. 

So I made the call. 

* * *

Blair 

I don't get him. I've given everything I can and still he wants more. 

There isn't anything more to give. 

Sitting here by the ocean, I try not thinking about Jim. 

It's so hard. I thought I had scoured all the pain away when I declared I was a fraud. 

This was to be a new start. But you know what, cadets read newspapers too. 

They also make judgments and they judged that I deserved to feel some pain for what some of their own had endured. 

I guess in a weird way, they were paying homage to Jim and Major Crime, by beating me up. 

Then to come home and be faced with Jim's expression when he found my- Damn! There I go thinking about him again. 

I have to stop. I have to make this pain go away. Every time I think it can't get any worse, it does. I just...I just don't think I can take any more. 

So I made the call. 

They want me in Egypt but I can't leave. Jim, my Sentinel, needs me. 

I've to get back to the loft. Fireworks are about to go off and my Sentinel may need help. There I go again, my Sentinel. Well, he's mine for as long as I'm near him. I've given him everything I have, my time, life and yes, dammit, my love. It doesn't matter that he's accepted all but my heart, I would do it all again, given another chance. 

* * *

Jim and Blair 

Blair blew in just before midnight. I can hear him, you know. Ears are even better than a bat's. 

I tracked his heartbeat - as he took off his jacket - as he put on the kettle for tea - as he saw my offering on the coffee table 

What I didn't expect was the silence. I know he saw it. Did I tell you he had also helped me locate where people are in a room. Echolocation he called it. Happened way back when - there was a drug - temporary blindness, par for our course, but not that unusual for us - but I learned to do the bat thing then. 

What I didn't expect was the quiet retreat to his room. 

Somewhere inside of me, I realized my offering hadn't been enough. 

Surely he understood what the writing on the single 3" x 5" card meant. 

As if he had heard my silent protest, one of the doors to his room opened. He remained cloaked in shadow but for me it might as well have been daylight. 

I could see the mottled bruises where a bunch of cadets had felt the need to teach Blair another lesson. 

A spiteful curl of satisfaction warmed me. It helped to be an Ellison. Four cadets would not be graduating with the class and should Blair wish to pursue it, he could sue the pants off them. Plus, an instructor was on permanent suspension from the academy. 

I have no idea how long we stood there facing each other before he finally spoke, "What did it cost you?" His voice was even, almost disinterested. "It doesn't matter you know." Blair released a gust of air. He gave one of his half smiles, y'know the one that's not really a smile, but a grimace masquerading as a pleasant expression. "I know you think applying arm twisting to the right people will help, but this...this is unfixable, Jim." 

Before I could utter a word, he swept on, "I'm going to join Dr. Harushan's dig in Egypt. It's not too late and they always need people, even disgraced academicians. I just can't do this anymore. I just-" 

As his voice broke, I took the final few steps to close the distance between us. I understood. Dear God, I understood. There is an old expression in the army - fubar - fucked up beyond all recognition. I didn't know how to untangle the snarl of our lives and lies, half truths and obfuscations. And Blair - right now - Blair was too tired to try. 

Maybe his way was the best way; a quick clean break. I opened my arms and brought my guide in close. We stood there unmoving, silent, until the first volley of fireworks began. 

Softly he murmured, "Turn down your hearing, Jim." 

That was it; we remained locked in a close embrace, not looking at what was probably a magnificent show, until the last fanfare played to a screeching rendition of Auld Lang Syne died away in the still night. 

He would not leave unless I said it. That one word was the hardest I had ever formed. Softly I whispered, "Go." 

Blair hugged me for a long time. I'd like to think he drew strength from that. "I just need to be away for a little while. I"ll be back, Man. I promise." 

Between you and me, he was promising a lot more, that hot breath on my chest said so, but I didn't call him on it. Why? Because he did need space and I knew he'd come back. When he did, we'd deal with the rest. 

Why not now? Because I had learned, finally learned, that Blair always keeps his promises. 

I made a mental note to follow up with Berkeley publishing when businesses re-opened on January 2. Their offer of a 1.2 million dollar settlement which my father had wrung out of Sid Graham's boss - since Sid no longer worked at the publishing company - would be a nice starter fund for Blair. 

For when he came back to Cascade. 

* * *

End 

Bitter Wind by Maigret: mlogick@hicom.net  
Author and story notes above.

Disclaimer: _The Sentinel_ is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc. These pages and the stories on them are not meant to infringe on, nor are they endorsed by, Pet Fly, Inc. and Paramount. 


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